Design and Creative Strategy

What Matter Light?

The color of home.

I moved to the Northwest at the end of a summer one year and within a month, someone pulled the lid over the place and we went dark. Having moved here from San Francisco, this sent me into deep mourning for the loss of light. It was a profound reaction and it took me a number of years to finally adjust. Still, pretty much every year since then, I make a pilgrimage back to the Bay Area to reexperience light. Light that fills the mind with champagne thoughts. Light that quickens the heart with the anticipation of pleasurable indulgences and well-lit beauty. Light that makes the air sparkle.

But nature has a way of compensating for whatever she takes from you and I have come to recognize her antidote for the absence of light during a good part of our year. It is the color green. She fills the air with it. Every green she can imagine—all at once. One has only to walk into the forest or a neighborhood park to drink in this pure and essential color of life. It makes up for a lot.

Green light is essentially healing light. It says to anyone who listens, "Trust me, I am always here. I am eternal." Green light calms the anxious mind and fills the heart with feeling. Nothing titteringly high, but the feeling of being balanced, creative and safe.

So I have come to love my home. To feel the power that emanates from this green place and to feel gratitude for its shelter. It is a true and honest place with rules that are reliable and fair. Green light many not induce champagne thinking, but it sure cures the longing for it...when you understand what really matters.